This section introduces aspects that may help facilitate a better understanding of the disclosure. Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is prior art or what is not prior art. Applications employing input measurement devices can typically be designed to constantly collect data associated with their environment. These collection systems usually need to be “always-on” systems and may involve one or more sensors. For example, a microphone may be used to acquire data from its environment that is to be analyzed for its content. This collection and analysis activity is usually added to the tasks of a host general purpose processor in a system, wherein the host general purpose processor may also be used for controlling overall system operations including scheduling the timing of data collection and follow-on signal data processing. In such applications, other general system elements such as shared processing operations, shared system memory and various bus interactions along with multiple possible interface conditions come into play that may cause critical data collections to be corrupted or even missed. Additionally, the use of general system elements for always-on data collection and processing conditions tends to be expensive from an energy usage standpoint.